The good news is the percentage of advertisers concerned about the "transparency" of their media agencies has gone down since the ANA first benchmarked the issue in 2014. The bad news is it remains a significant level of concern and has been growing due to the rise principal media-buying.

And now the ANA knows which half. Its Q1 programmatic benchmark reveals advertisers are stratifying into two distinct "lower" and "higher" performing groups.

So far, AI is just another tool for persuading humans, but when consumers hand off to AI agents, humans will be out of the loop. That's not something marketers have faced before. Humans have always been the target. Until now.

"We're moving beyond the old model where great work required layers of outside agencies, long timelines, and huge production budgets. With AI, stronger in-house teams, and smarter production models, brands can now create at a much higher level, much more consistently."

That's what I asked Brandience's Brian McHale when he briefed me on the agency's new AI-generated "Synthetic Market Research & Testing" system.

Let me say the quiet part out loud: Publicis-LiveRamp is not a tech deal. It's not even a data deal. It's the repositioning of a major holdco from a neutral agent to a vertically integrated martech and business transformation enterprise.

Pocketbooks are taking a hit, but affordability is not only about price. It's also about how people regard the system itself and the world-at-large. Lower prices won't fix this.